Free Cash

[Havoc]

I trust that my reputation here is good enough that people won't think that this is spam. Still, I'll post this offer only if people are actually interested.

For people in the UK only, and works out to GBP 7.5 per household. Not much, but at least it's free. :)

[Doolipalally]

Your reputation can definitely stand it!

OK, I'll bite - what is this?

[Havoc]

Ok, here's the deal:

Process
1. Visit FatCheese (http://www.fatcheese.co.uk/?referrer=6001), and sign up for a free account.
2. Once signed up, go to the left hand side, and click on 'No Spend Cashback'
3. The very first link will be for 4 free issues of Time magazine. Click on it.
4. On the time website, put in your name and address, and you will receive 4 free issues. You do not need to give any kind of credit card details.

Results
That's it. Your free issues will show up at your door starting in 2-3 weeks. Your account on FatCheese will show a credit of 12.5 pounds. Of this, 5 pounds will be witheld as an admin fee, and 7.5 is yours to keep. (This can take up to a day to show up. It will then take some more time to actually be awarded) Eventually you will be able to withdraw your money. You can redeem your cashback via BACS, PayPal or Moneybookers.

Disclaimer:
1. The offer seems legit to me, and I have signed up for it myself. Since they don't take your credit card details, I don't see any avenue for fraud. However, you are responsible for your own research.
2. I do benefit. I get 5 quid to my account for each referral using the link above. I get this only after you receive your 7.5. This comes out of the admin fee that you would lose anyways. Any further transactions you do on the site are entirely yours to keep.

And if you want to stay perfectly safe, take the cashback to a Paypal account, and use it to donate $10 to Sryth. 16AT free. :p

P.S. You may be able to do this even if you are outside the UK, by providing a fictitious UK address, but I am not responsible for any consequences. ;)

[smv1973]

What happens if I just put my address from where I live in the U.S.?

[Havoc]

I actually don't know. No harm giving it a try. Time is an international magazine right?

And even if you have no use for pounds, you could just use receive money to paypal option, and trade it in for 16 AT.

[smv1973]

I actually don't know. No harm giving it a try. Time is an international magazine right?

And even if you have no use for pounds, you could just use receive money to paypal option, and trade it in for 16 AT.

Yes we have Time magazine for sale here in the States. I will give it a try and let you know what happens.

[Doolipalally]

The only reason I'm hesitating about this one is that I've had a bad experience in the past with cancelling a subscription after the free issues. Agreed, your money's fairly safe if they don't have your credit card details, but if anything goes wrong (and it often does with subscriptions - take the word of a librarian!) then you can end up with a bad credit rating.

The other reason I don't usually do anything which involves telling someone where I live is that I already get a lot of junk mail and I'd rather not increase it. But then, I'm not going to be living at this address for much longer anyway...

[smv1973]

@ Havoc did you get this when you signed up?



Yes, please send my 4 Free Preview Issues of TIME. If I like TIME, I'll receive 52 additional issues for a total of 56 issues in all (1 year) for just $20.00 - a savings of 90% off the newsstand price! This low price includes the cost of my free trial issues. You'll also receive the ULTRONIC™ Touch-Screen Organizer FREE with your paid subscription. To receive the touch screen, please check the box below the premium image. If you don't want to continue with TIME after your trial period, simply return your bill marked "cancel" and owe nothing. The cancellation is effective immediately, and any trial issues I receive are mine to keep free.

[smv1973]

The only reason I'm hesitating about this one is that I've had a bad experience in the past with cancelling a subscription after the free issues. Agreed, your money's fairly safe if they don't have your credit card details, but if anything goes wrong (and it often does with subscriptions - take the word of a librarian!) then you can end up with a bad credit rating.

The other reason I don't usually do anything which involves telling someone where I live is that I already get a lot of junk mail and I'd rather not increase it. But then, I'm not going to be living at this address for much longer anyway...

Did you get this when you went to the site?


Yes, please send my 4 Free Preview Issues of TIME. If I like TIME, I'll receive 52 additional issues for a total of 56 issues in all (1 year) for just $20.00 - a savings of 90% off the newsstand price! This low price includes the cost of my free trial issues. You'll also receive the ULTRONIC™ Touch-Screen Organizer FREE with your paid subscription. To receive the touch screen, please check the box below the premium image. If you don't want to continue with TIME after your trial period, simply return your bill marked "cancel" and owe nothing. The cancellation is effective immediately, and any trial issues I receive are mine to keep free.

[Havoc]

@smv,
I get:
If you decide you like TIME, you’ll receive 50 more issues – 54 in all – for only £34.99. That's 74% off the cover price! You’ll also receive the Encyclopaedia Britannica DVD 2009 FREE with your paid subscription. If you don’t want to continue with TIME after your trial period, simply return your bill marked "cancel" and owe nothing.

@Dooli,
The only one that gets your address is Time. I'd expect them not to do something too shady. However, as always, caveat emptor.

[smv1973]

@smv,
I get:
If you decide you like TIME, you’ll receive 50 more issues – 54 in all – for only £34.99. That's 74% off the cover price! You’ll also receive the Encyclopaedia Britannica DVD 2009 FREE with your paid subscription. If you don’t want to continue with TIME after your trial period, simply return your bill marked "cancel" and owe nothing.

@Dooli,
The only one that gets your address is Time. I'd expect them not to do something too shady. However, as always, caveat emptor.

Thanks. I signed up so I will see what happens.

[Doolipalally]

@smv - I get the same text as Havoc

@Havoc - it's really only the credit rating which bothers me, and that's not an issue to do with shady behaviour, just the efficiency or lack of it of their accounts department.

[thingirl]

Regarding the text, I'm NOT going to sign up, but I expect the ad is edited for what country you live in.

[smv1973]

As of right now I don't have any credit listed in my account. I do see the admin fee is listed as pending.

[Havoc]

Looks like it might be only for UK addresses then. You should still get the 4 free issues.

[smv1973]

This is what it shows under my account.


Total cashback: £

Awarded: £0.00

Pending: £

Available to redeem: £0.00

Admin Fee (2009): £5.00

Admin Fee Remaining: £5.00

[Badstench]

For want of a better thread, i'm gonna post this here...

Today, I caught a bus to downtown. As I was disembarking, I saw a wallet on the step of the bus. In one movement, I swept it up and kept going.

When I opened the wallet, there was $50 cash and lots of cards, including a visa card.

I pulled everything out of the wallet, but there was nothing to tell me a contact phone number or address. I knew the owner's name from the cards, but that was all.

In retrospect, I could have handed the wallet to the bank that corresponded to the visa card, but I didn't. Instead, I gave it to the next bus driver I saw, thinking he would take it to the 'lost property' department and reunite it with the owner eventually.

What do you think about this, given you were in the same situation? Is the $50 losers weepers, would you take it?

[Doolipalally]

If I was broke and needed the money for food or rent, yes. Since I'm not, no.

[scout1idf]

If I was broke and needed the money for food or rent, yes. Since I'm not, no.
Same here..

I think I would have turned it into the bank or police though. You never know about the bus driver.....

[Doolipalally]

I think I would have turned it into the bank or police though. You never know about the bus driver.....

Yeah, I was thinking that. Actually, even leaving aside the question of how honest the bus driver is, it seems a bit harsh to leave him with the problem. A lost umbrella's one thing, but a wallet is more of a burden.

[Badstench]

The bus company has a 'lost property' department. If I left something on the bus, that's the first place I'd make enquiries.

And besides... you make aspersions against our noble bus-brothers and sisters upon whose shoulders are entrusted the safe arrival of people and property to destinations of their choosing.

Hurumph!

[Young Ned]

By the time the person notices their wallet is missing, though, they may have no idea where they left it, so there's no guarantee they'll check with the bus company first. They probably will get to it sooner or later, admittedly, just by retracing their steps. "Let's see, I could have left it in that store, or in my office, or on that bus on the way home..."

I'd probably turn it in to the bank that issued the card, though, since they're guaranteed to have contact information for the person.

[texlaw1992]

I'd return it. However, I understand Badstench's point about leaving the wallet with a bus driver. It works better in a smaller country like New Zealand than in a country the size of the US.

Just as an example, years ago when my family and I were touring Israel, my father left his wallet in a Jerusalem hotel room. We were already in Tiberius and my father figured it was lost forever. One call to the hotel and the wallet was delivered to us intact the next day. Had that happened in NYC, for example, good luck getting it back.

[Scarbrow]

Risking to definitely hijack the thread from Havoc, I probably would have kept the money, and made my best effort to return the wallet (though police, probably). It's the cards and documents what makes the biggest loss (i don't know about you, but it's a couple of weeks and a whole morning of queue waiting just to recover your ID card around here). The unfortunate former owner of the wallet would have received way less had I not found and returned it, so I still think it's a good deal for both parts - he gets his documents back, and I get a nice unintended tip for it.

Please don't think too badly of me because of this... :p

[Badstench]

Here's another bus story in a similar vein... it's long and convoluted, but it has a happy ending, sort of.

Yesterday (my Saturday) I caught a bus way across town to buy a pair of shoes [The reason I went a long way is we have a mall in a suburb that specialises with 'brand' stores that sell damaged, 'seconds' and last season's stock... so it's cheap... like me!]

Shoes successfully purchased, I then went to catch a bus back to the city. A young girl was standing at the bust station looking perplexed and upset. She had a huge roller suitcase and a violin case (with a violin inside, I presumed).

A bus pulled up, she waited respectfully for everyone else to get on (including me), then hefted her suitcase on board and began a tale of woe to the driver. She was asking for help.

Straight away, I could hear by her accent that she was Dutch or German, and although her English was quite good, she was having trouble making herself understood to the Pacific Islander bus driver.

It seemed she had arrived on an international flight the night before, had stayed at a hotel near the airport, then caught a bus to the city that morning... and she'd left her wallet/purse on the bus. Inside were all her credit cards, ATM cards and NZ$200... she had no cash on her person.

The bus was standing at the station for 5 minutes while she tried to make the driver aware of the urgency of her situation, but the driver was looking harried because he couldn't understand the girl and was running late.

Being a Saturday, the bus depot isn't open, and only a dispatch person is available. Unfortunately, the German girl (whose name I later discovered was Eva) couldn't remember the route number of the bus she'd been on, so all the dispatch person could do was put out a general call to all bus drivers who had been at that station about the time she'd disembarked. Eva thought he'd be able to radio the other bus driver directly, but without knowing exactly which bus it was, that wasn't possible... a lot of buses pull in and out of that station all the time.

They could narrow it down to a few buses by where she'd got on, but if that driver hadn't yet discovered the purse, he'd be none-the-wiser.

Eva was starting to get agitated and more upset because of the communication difficulties (and she was, basically, stranded in a city where she knew no one and nothing about).

Up steps me!

I offer to help her by paying her fare into the city or... we could try and work it out at the station we were at. Eva didn't want to leave the station until she had some glimmer of news about her lost purse, so I stayed with her.

For a half hour, we called the bus company and were given various depots phone numbers to ring, but, of course, no one was working on saturdays.

Bugger me, Eva started to cry!

What do you do? I'm a 45-year old man trying to help a young girl (she could have been anywhere between 16 and 26... I'm hopeless with women's ages) and she needs reassuring. I think a hug might have been a bit weird.

So I sit her down and start asking where she's going and if she knows anyone, and it turns out she's an exchange student on her way to meet her host family at the city station, and she's already late... and their phone number is in her lost purse. She doesn't know what they look like and vice-versa.

I take command... we get on the next bus (I pay for her) and half an hour later we're at the central bus station... and I check with Information to see if anyone's left a message for Eva and no one has, so she starts to cry again.

So I ask the Information desk to page the party for Eva Nueman every 15 minutes, buy us both a coffee and something to eat and we sit down in hopes someone will turn up.

After about 20 minutes, her host family hears the message and Eva is united with her destination. I spend ten minutes explaining everything that's occurred and how best to pursue enquiries after the lost purse.

We go our separate ways.

I'm walking out the bus station when Eva calls after me... "I don't even know your name," she says, and gives me a big hug.

All up, I'd been with with Eva for 2 and a half hours.

Did I go above and beyond what was required? Shrug. It was Saturday and I had nowhere else to be (except my favourite Cd store, where I purchased Leonard Cohen's Various Positions).

Could my extreme have been interpreted as being creepy? This is a thought that crossed my mind.

But, if we can't be superheroes, sometimes we can be somebody's knight in shining armour. Sometimes, it's good to go out of your way to offer someone help, and Eva definitely needed help.

And that's the story... sorry it took so long to tell.

[Scarbrow]

I must say I'm proud of you, Badstench. It's a great thing you did. While I also think some people might have found that creepy, you were, quite literally, that girl's salvation, and of course she recognized that. Not many people, in today's world, would have step up and done the right thing. I'd like to think I would have, but I would probably have been too embarrassed to do anything (I'm quite hopeless when it comes to people whose language I have problems understanding).

Have a very deserved repp for your selflessness

[texlaw1992]

No, it wasn't creepy and you did a mitzvah (good deed). No need to second-guess yourself.

Your story kind of remains me of a visit to Universal Studios many years ago. A couple who appeared to be from south of the border was clearly lost, so I took it upon myself to attempt to direct them in Spanish. After about a minute of fruitless communication, they told me "no, Italiano" (they were Italian, lol).

Oddly enough, that worked because although my Italian is very limited, I could point them left (sinister, which is left in Italian and the origin of the English word) to get them where they needed to go.